Dive into the archives.
- Student Works: Trawling the Thames / Fish 'n Ships
[The Tower Bridge Seafood Market explores a fictitious urban scenario where direct access to the sea provides the ability for fish farming to become free-ranging. All drawings by Jonathan Blair.]
Last month I had the pleasure of attending final reviews at University of Michigan Taubman College for two days. I saw an incredible range of work [...]
- P3-Post Peak Phosphorous
[Togo phosphates mining]
If you thought post-peak oil had generated media frenzy (and spawned endless sustainable design projects), there’s another, quieter crisis looming – post-peak phosphorous.
Phosphorus is at the heart of modern farming; an essential ingredient of agricultural fertilizers. It has no synthetic alternative and is being mined, used and wasted as never before. Inefficiencies [...]
- Vortex streets
[Alternating eddies of vortex street.]
[The Canary Islands as an eddy-creating obstacle via GSFC/NASA.]
Vortex streets emerge when the right wind and cloud formation encounters the right kind of obstacle. Theodore von Kármán, a fluid dynamicist, observed and documented this phenomenon. Swirling rings sequence along a street-like corridor trail beyond the obstacle. Each ring stems from an [...]
- Medius Terra / Aqua
[Agriculture and Fisheries in the Mediterranean. Zoï Environment Network.]
We were excited to see that MedSec and UNEP have released a series of recent maps on various aspects of the environment dependent upon Mediterranean Sea. The series is titled, appropriately enough, "Environment and Security in the Mediterranean." They have documented Agriculture and Fisheries, Migration, Water, Population, [...]
- Studio: Frozen Cities, Liquid Networks
[Frozen Cities, Liquid Networks, Advanced Studio, University of Waterloo, Fall 2009.]
Today we are having the final review of the "Frozen Cities, Liquid Networks" Studio at the University of Waterloo. We will be sharing some of the work here in the coming week or two, but in the meantime, here is the brief. Please email us [...]
- Student Works: Smart-Ark
[10 living, breathing, sweating towers form a line of defense in a fragile estuary. All images by Nicholas Szczepaniak.]
Acting as a defense barrier, these 10 massive towers form a line in the Blackwater Estuary in Essex, UK. They are the vision of Nicholas Szczepaniak, a recent graduate of Westminster, and the winner of the RIBA [...]
- Invisible Superprojects
Erie Canal in Lockport, New York
Where are the super-projects? This is the question Louis Uchitelle asks in his recent article “Entering the Superproject Void” (New York Times). In retracing the continuum of America’s greatest hits in large scaled public works (from the Erie Canal to the Hoover Dam, from the transcontinental network of the Interstate [...]
- Reservoir Effect
[Great Lakes region: Lake effect snow operates in alternating bands of rising warm air and clear bands of falling cold air. Taken December 5, 2000 image using NASA's SeaWiFS satellite.]
In a recent drive back from Syracuse to Toronto, I was struck by the inevitable presence of snow in Buffalo. No snow before Buffalo, or [...]
- Global Food Networks: Countries Buying Countries
[Greenhouses being erected in Jittu, Ethiopia. Simon Norfolk for The New York Times.]
Two weeks ago, in an article entitled 'Is There Such a Thing as Agro-Imperialism', the New York Times reported that financially wealthy but resource-poor nations in the Middle East and Asia are attempting to ensure food security by buying up large tracks of [...]
- Wet Borders: Microslums and Meanders
[On Migingo Island, 300 fisherman and traders are served by 4 pubs, several brothels, and a pharmacy.]
Migingo Island, home to some 300 residents, sits precariously within Lake Victoria along the watery border of Uganda and Kenya. Its undetermined origins declare that either: a) two Kenyan fisherman settled there in 1991, or b) a Ugandan fisherman [...]
